Monday, 23 December 2019

JOKER
Todd Phillips' revisionist take on one of pop culture's most iconic villains surprised the shit out of me: not because I thought the idea of a Joker origin film was an inherently bad one (although I did, tbf), but because it was a good Todd Phillips film. The argument over whether it was right to transform Gotham's cackling symbol of chaos into an actual human being with a backstory still rages, and we wouldn't be having that argument if the film had been a flat out failure so it must have done something right. That something was essentially casting Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, an avatar for the disenfranchised, the disillusioned and the disadvantaged of both the film’s 1981 setting and the present day. The Scorsese tributes were delicious and appropriate, the boundaries of taste were shoved around a bit and the whole experiment was as disturbing and thought-provoking as its subject deserved.

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER
As with The Last Jedi, the essence of Star Wars carried Episode IX through its disappointments. I could have done without an hour of interminable MacGuffin-chasing, and the shameless lifts from Return Of The Jedi were much harder to forgive than The Force Awakens' echoes of A New Hope, but if you're going to wrap up these characters' stories this way (and it's hard to imagine how else to have done it) at least JJ Abrams pulled it off in true Star Warsy style. The fan service was off the scale here but it was done with genuine love; nothing felt forced (sorry) and the most affecting moments felt like they'd been put there just for me. I'll get over the quibbles in time (the biggest being Abrams wilfully ignoring much of Rian Johnson's most intriguing setups), but it's probably a good idea to put the brakes on this franchise for the time being.

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
The funniest (and most fun) member of the MCU returned to provide the sticky toffee pudding after the carb-heavy meatfest of Endgame, proving once and for all that we're currently living in a golden age of movie Spider-Men. Tom Holland is the comic genius Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield wish they were, and Far From Home showed he didn't need Robert Downey Jr to hold his hand through the best bits. It might have been lacking a little in the way of actual Spider-Man action, but the character work between Peter Parker, MJ, Ned and the gang is just as welcome. And all hail the return of the King Of Fake News (not Mysterio; the other guy. You know. The one at the end).

BAIT
Nothing this year provided as big a breath of fresh, salty sea air as this admittedly slight but intensely hypnotic tale of the loss of community and identity in rural Britain. Gentrification and the shifting sands of industry are the bad guys, personified by prosecco-wielding, Waitrose-dwelling, "prancing Lycra cunts" with zero appreciation for how their middle class meals end up on their middle class plates. Director Mark Jenkin's editing proved the real star here, pushing an already hallucinatory aesthetic (4:3, monochrome, hand-processed 16mm film) into the kind of expressionist fantasy world that small coastal villages generally evoke to urban, landlocked visitors. The message is clear from the start and maybe a little overcooked (the line "winner stays on" is repeated for good reason), but the atmosphere is everything. We need more films like this.

ONE CUT OF THE DEAD
Showcasing the clever, fun and sweet side of limb-lopping horror, this barkingly meta romp - the Inception of zom-coms; a Russian doll of rug-pulls - knowingly ran the entire spectrum of genre ideas, from the most yawningly clichéd to the most gobsmackingly original. Low-budget filmmaking has rarely been celebrated this ingeniously, where art butts heads with necessity and teamwork triumphs over adversity. You really did need to stick with it despite what you might have thought of the first half hour, because the true awesome nature of its creative genius was only fully revealed in the last act - and then topped under the credits. A carnival of setups and payoffs that loved its characters as much as its own mind-boggling formal virtuosity, One Cut Of The Dead proved there's life in the rotting corpse of horror comedy yet.

IN FABRIC
Peter Strickland would struggle to do wrong in this dusty corner of the internet, so while his fourth feature certainly isn't perfect - it's overlong and awkwardly structured - it's still among the most surprising, original and exciting things to spurt across a cinema screen this year. A horror-comedy of sorts (although it's neither especially scary nor funny), In Fabric was a truly unique and bewildering experience: an ASMR-inspired dreamcoat of wild imagery and engulfing sound design that reinforces Strickland's position as one of Britain’s most vital, fascinating directors.

MIDSOMMAR
I was quite aware going in to Midsommar that it wasn't going to be a barrel of laughs; what I didn't expect was extreme levels of soul-gnawing anxiety that left me with a knot in my stomach for the best part of a week. Surprisingly sun-drenched and beautiful for a dread-laden study of grief, Midsommar distracted me with bright colours and pretty things while it burrowed into the self-destructive nature of toxic relationships with surgical precision and skill. Incredibly powerful filmmaking, but fuck me I never want to see a frame of it again.

THE IRISHMAN
It took two viewings (i.e. SEVEN HOURS) to convince me, but Martin Scorsese doesn't make disposable, single-use movies. This long and deep dive into late twentieth century American organised crime is a film to get lost in; like a great museum, you can sit and soak up the details for literally hours. At its heart is a void where an actual heart should be, but Robert De Niro's Frank Sheeran gets by fine without it - or at least he thinks he does. His empty legacy is The Irishman's devastating kicker, but the film itself only enriches the canon of work Scorsese has gifted the world. It carries all the weight of a final masterpiece; we can only hope that's not what it is.

AVENGERS: ENDGAME
My relationship with the MCU over the last ten years has essentially been a steady wearing-down of my indifference, from the couldn't-give-a-shit of Iron Man in 2008 to the must-get-opening-day-tickets of Endgame. And while I liked this year's super-orgy well enough first time, I crumpled under the weight of its wonder with repeated viewings. Everything about it screams "epic" in bold, massive-font capitals, from the weighty mood of its early scenes to the final, celebratory half-hour, which contains more air-punching, tear-jerking, spine-prickling moments of brilliance than the rest of the franchise combined. You win, Avengers. I love you 2,999.

US
More scissor-sharp sociopolitical savagery from Jordan Peele, making his point a little more obliquely than in Get Out but with no less bite. An America-centric Funny Games, Us had something to say about the privilege of the wealthy middle classes, and how capitalism and consumerism keep them (us) focused on grabbing a little bit more, thus keeping us distracted from those who have so much less. Of course Swiftian satire only works if what's above the surface is good enough, and Us delivered good old-fashioned home invasion horror with sophisticated wit and a total understanding of audience button-pushing. Lupita Nyong'o sealed her rep as a cultural treasure and Peele joined the very short list of directors whose future films I cannot miss under any circumstances.

Wednesday, 4 December 2019

For those of us beginning to wonder if the promise of another Bond film was nothing more than a vicious rumour, the first trailer for Cary Fukunaga's No Time To Die dropped today, proving at the very least that 156 seconds of this movie definitely exist. So what can we learn from this exciting blast of Bondery? Let's find out!

Our first look at the brand new Bond film for the brand new decade sees him being chased through picturesque Italy in an Aston Martin. We haven't seen that kind of thing since three Bond films ago!

I fucking love Angry Bond. Bond looks very angry throughout most of this trailer. Maybe he just got out of a screening of Spectre.

When sitting in the passenger seat of an Aston Martin being driven by James Bond, being chased through winding, hazardous streets, maybe pop a seatbelt on? Just a thought.

Bond diving off a ridic high bridge? We haven't seen that kind of thing since two Bond films ago!

Is it just me or does M appear, in the common parlance, to have become something of a chonky boi?

Absolutely wonderful to see Jeffrey Wright's Felix Leiter back after a TWELVE-YEAR absence. Here he is hanging around in a seedy bar waiting for Bond to turn up. We haven't seen that kind of thing since three Bond films ago!

Here's Bond getting a dusty old Aston Martin out of a backstreet lockup. We haven't seen that kind of thing since two Bond films ago! Actually the return of the Aston Martin Vantage from The Living Daylights is a very welcome one. With any luck Timothy Dalton's still in it.

Cary Fukunaga is really pushing the orange and teal colour palette with this one. It's lovely, but it is a bit every-movie-poster-between-2008-and-2016.

Oh mate, a visitor's pass? Embarrassing.

This joke is excellent and has Phoebe Waller-Bridge's fingerprints all over it. More please.

Q's flat! A new sweater! But will we see his two cats? Nice glass in those doors by the way, I'll keep that in mind in case it becomes relevant later in the trailer.

Blofeld is serving time at HM Prison Wakefield, leading to the very real possibility of Bond visiting West Yorkshire for the first time.

He's still angry. Let it go man, what kind of loser stays cross about a film that came out four years ago, Jesus.

Christoph Waltz here, still claiming he's not playing Blofeld.

Here's Rami Malek's villain Safin, trudging around in Roger Moore's skiwear from the pre-title sequence of A View To A Kill. Will Daniel Craig finally get some winter sports action? We can only hope.

Yes we've all seen your watch, just cash the cheque from Omega and get on with it.

Who's this? And more importantly, what's he or she doing in Q's flat? I swear to God if they've laid a finger on his cats or sweaters I will be very cross indeed.

Trapped under a frozen lake? We haven't seen that kind of thing since two Bond films ago!

Disability campaigners: The evil of movie bad guys being represented by facial disfigurement needs to stop!

Bond films: Absolutely. There's not one evil guy with a facial disfigurement in this one. There are two!

Rami Malek has much to prove here. As Bond himself says: "History isn't kind to men who play rock gods".

They'll be fine as long as they're wearing seatbelts.

I was as thrilled as you to discover that 'Ana de Armas' is an anagram of 'armed assassin'! [note to self: check before publishing]

I don't know what's going on in this villain's lair, it looks like some kind of awful performance art. Come on guys, this isn't the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, shove a monorail in there or something.

Still time to change the title lads.

This shot had better be worked into the gunbarrel sequence or so help me I will mutter under my breath about it for several years.

Are you excited? I'm excited. Please be good, new Bond film, I can't deal with another Spectre.

Friday, 22 November 2019

You probably thought you'd seen the last of my Stanley Kubewaffle, what with Eyes Wide Shut being his last film and all. Well, I didn't come all this way just to make phenomenally incisive and original observations into each of his thirteen features and three shorts, you know: this is a film blog, so I am bound by convention to rank each of those films in order of my irrelevant preference. So here we go, and if you want to start at the start, head this way!

16

Catatonically boring corporate video for life on the ocean waves, shot entirely on dry land. It's literally ridiculous that you have to include this in the films of Stanley Kubrick, yet here we are. Completists gonna complete. Review

15

A dull and amateurish doc about a priest with a plane that struggles to wring interest out of its dry subject matter. Little wonder that this wasn't the film that would help Stanley Kubrick's career... (*puts on sunglasses, leans into mic*) take off. Review

14

There's a clear eye for the dramatic and an experimental approach to temporality in this short documentary, but Kubrick's first foray into filmmaking reveals more about his past as a photographer than his future as as a cinematic genius. Review

13

Stan's first feature is an admirable failure: saddled with ponderous, preposterous dialogue, Fear And Desire examines the absurdity of war through a filter of pretentious pseudo-intellectualism. Primordial elements of Kubrick's future are there to be discovered, but my goodness you have to shovel a lot of shit out of the way first. Review

12

Kubo finds himself accidentally in charge of somebody else's film, and the results are predictably unhappy. Kirk Douglas looks great in his spray tan and weird underpants, but after three and a quarter hours you wish the film had concentrated on its real MVPs: Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton. Review

11

The Kube's Cold War-era-defining satire is admirable and often brilliant, but its uneven comedic tone and one-note characters make it a tough sell. I'm virtually alone in this viewpoint but give it a few more decades and history will doubtlessly catch up with me. Review

10

A second-rate film noir with a standout visual aesthetic, Killer's Kiss shows Stanley Kubrick very much learning on the job. It looks fantastic, but in a genre where most films do, that's not enough. Review

9

A film of two halves, the first of which is top-notch, balls-out, classic Kubrickian eye-and-ear-candy that's arguably the last truly great thing he made. The second, sadly, is a bog-standard war flick which, in the shadow of Part One, could only ever disappoint. Review

8

Slow, boring and totally lacking in incident are just three of the wrongest opinions about Stan's artfully realised, 18th century take on toxic masculinity. A lavish treat for the eyeballs, Barry Lyndon contrasts visual beauty with mannered beastliness in minute, subtle detail. Review

7

A decent budget and a savvy producer helped Kubo make his first great film: a taut, experimental heist movie laced with the themes of hubris and absurdity that would distinguish much of his career. Characters sleaze off the screen and you could crack the dialogue with the back of a spoon. Review

6

Kubrick ponders free will, state control and the effects of violence on screen in the cinematic equivalent of a ferocious kick in the yarbles. Absolutely unique in concept and execution, A Clockwork Orange is the work of a fearless filmmaker that really make u think. Review

5

Stan signed off with his most mature, and arguably most misunderstood, work of art. Far from the A-list fuckfest its (mis)marketing suggested, Kubrick's meditation on marriage, fidelity, temptation, jealousy and sex people in daft masks took him in a new direction but stayed true to his lifelong preoccupations. Review

4

Stanley Kubrick makes you pity a paedophile in this indefinable oddity. Controversial, sure, but more importantly funny as fuck, with fully-drawn characters that blow The Kube's false rep as a cold, dispassionate director out of the water. Review

3

The Kube's first masterpiece is a devastating, furious assault on the injustices committed in wartime in the name of patriotism. Staggering in all the best and worst ways, with Kirk Douglas magnetic as one of Stan's few heroes. Review

2

Aided by a holy trinity of flawlessly OTT performances, Kubrick crafts the purest expression of psychological horror in all of cinema. The setup might have become cliché but the execution is timeless: after forty years every scene still oozes dread, every shot still spawns unease. Review

1

It's impossible to overstate the mesmerising fear and wonder 2OO1 elicits on every viewing: Stanley Kubrick's greatest achievement is a beautiful, terrifying mindfuck that asks all the biggest questions and answers precisely none (except how to do a poo in zero gravity). When highly evolved mankind looks back at its own primitive daubings, this will be the only clue that we belong to the same species. Review

*

OK, that really is it for Kubism. Thanks for your indifferent tolerance!